Injecting Real Youth Into a Youthful Show

Hunter Parrish and Alexandra Socha are in the current cast of "Spring Awakening," at the Eugene ONeill Theater.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

For some 21st-century Americans, teenage pregnancy may not have precisely the same scandalous — or sorrowful — significance it did just a couple of weeks ago. But in provincial 19th-century Germany, the prospect of an unmarried adolescent giving birth was definitely a family calamity.

The unfortunate Wendla, the girl on the brink of womanhood in Frank Wedekind’s “Spring Awakening,” discovers the pleasures of sex before she is clued in to the mechanics of procreation, with disastrous consequences. Alexandra Socha, who now plays the role in the hypnotic musical adaptation of the play on Broadway, looks so girlish and delicate that her plight sets you squirming in your seat. When she turns a look of pleading confusion on the mother who has kept her in ignorance, the folly of leaving adolescents to the mercy of their raging hormones snaps sharply into focus.

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Hunter Parrish in "Spring Awakening."Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Ms. Socha is not the only member of the new cast who seems to have recently entered the rough terrain of puberty. Almost all of the current cast members — and virtually the whole class of German schoolboys and schoolgirls stomping the Eugene O’Neill stage are replacements for the originals — look as if they have yet to meet their first pimples.

It’s a daring choice that underscores the more radical aspects of both Wedekind’s play and the musical adaptation by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater. These are not adults well into their 20s playing at playing adolescents and keeping us at ease as we witness their sexual exploration. Their youth is actual, not fictional, making it that much more unsettling to watch them being overcome by overheated erotic dreams and their own probing hands.

Hunter Parrish, who plays Mary-Louise Parker’s elder son in the pot-mom series “Weeds,” is a winning presence in the central role of Melchior, who initiates Wendla into the joys and terrors of sex and, not incidentally, love. His singing is sweet but light, and not especially rich in expressiveness. But the piercing blue eyes, boyish beauty and glowing physicality convince you that he would be a magnet for the adoration of many a German schoolgirl (and the occasional German schoolboy). The almost casual manner in which Wendla and Melchior move from friendly acquaintances to intimate, self-surprising young lovers is effectively drawn by Mr. Parrish and Ms. Socha.

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Alexandra Socha and Hunter Parrish in "Spring Awakening."Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

As the hapless Moritz, the failing student staggering under the weight of strange, hormonal fever dreams, Gerard Canonico may not have the soulful inwardness of his predecessor in the role, the Tony-winning John Gallagher Jr. But he uses his wonderfully expressive face to delicious comic effect. When Moritz fumes at his mistreatment by the ego-stomping adults around him, the blood rises in Mr. Canonico’s cheeks, and Moritz turns into a squashed tomato before our eyes. A squashed tomato under a shock of angry hair, that is.

The supporting roles have been adventurously and profitably cast. Each of the actors has a distinctive, arresting face, and one that would look just right in a faded photograph from a century or more ago. These adolescents have adolescent bodies, too, some ample, some spindle-thin. Amanda Castaños, as the abused Martha, and Emma Hunton, as the outcast Ilse, lead their songs powerfully. Matt Doyle and Blake Daniel enact the seduction scene between the sly Hanschen and the tentative Ernst with consummate wit. New to the adult male roles, Glenn Fleshler displays ample range and glimpses of real feeling when necessary.

So, too, does Christine Estabrook, a holdover from the original cast. But her ferocious comic approach to the opening scene between Wendla and her mother is ill-judged. Her character’s fluttery discomfort at discussing the simple facts of childbirth with her pubescent daughter ultimately has terrible consequences. It should not be treated as an opportunity for shtick.

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A scene from "Spring Awakening."Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Mr. Sheik and Mr. Sater’s vibrant score continues to impress with its deft blend of straight-up rock, folk and melodic pop that captures the mercurial moods of adolescent experience, the fury that is a mask for frustration, the tides of longing that ebb and flow uncontrollably.

The band, under Kimberly Grigsby, the music director, remains powerfully engaged in the show, a benefit of both being onstage and being a tight musical unit. The musicians no doubt also take inspiration from the excitement of the new cast, clearly thrilled to be performing in a musical that speaks so immediately to audiences their own age. When the performers collectively rush onstage to join in one of the explosive, stomp-the-floor expressions of hormonal angst, the first couple of rows in the orchestra seats seem to be thumping along with them.

Scan the biographies in the program and almost every one seems to begin with the same two words: “Broadway debut.” Those words are almost invariably followed by an exclamation point — or three.